The ongoing economic recession has been hard on nearly every American city, but few have been hit quite so hard as Las Vegas, a place that hinges on whim and disposable income. One notable victim is the city’s Liberace Museum, which has been in operation since 1979. A splendor of sequins, baubles, bespoke costumes, elegant cars, and antique pianos, the museum will close on October 17. A press release from the Liberace Foundation holds out some hope for fans, however, saying, “The board will … continue to research options for a location change to make the Museum more accessible to potential patrons.”

Liberace was a strange bird, as anyone who was around in his long heyday will remember. He was a constant fixture for decades in Vegas, where he played almost every night, earning more than $5 million a year for a quarter-century—that is to say, something on the order of $35 million today. His popular television variety show, a pioneer of syndication, dominated the airwaves in the early 1950s, only a touch less so when he took it up again at the end of the 1960s; he was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show, and he even had a running part in Batman.

Alas, though, Liberace always appealed to what the suits call “an older demographic,” much of which has been steadily disappearing since his death in 1987. Thus the closing of the museum, which, the New York Timesreports, once enjoyed 450,000 visitors a year but now sees a comparative handful.

Sic transit: and so it goes. Here’s Liberace—without doubt a great pianist, never mind what one might think of his approach to performance—serving up a version of Euphemia Allen’s “Chopsticks,” revealing a musical cliché to have perhaps unsuspected substance. It is just so with his rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2, better known as the “Moonlight Sonata”—and never mind the intrusion of strings. He then brings in a heaping helping of boogie-woogie. We close with an ermine-caped Liberace performing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with bits and pieces of other songs mixed in.